yankee doodle dandy

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Katharine Houghton Hepburn

 born Hartford, Connecticut  May 12, 1907

died at her home at the river's mouth, in the Borough of Fenwick, Old Saybrook, June 29, 2003

family summer home at the mouth of the river, where it meets Long Island Sound, 

within sight of the town's Saybrook Lighthouse.

Could she be THE quintessential all- encompassing American Beauty? 

Woman?

Yankee doodle?

graduated Bryn Mawr College in 1928

where she, drank, smoked, skinny dipped

 independent
modern
 feisty

 

 "In some ways I've lived my life as a man, made my own decisions. 

I've been as terrified as the next person, but you've got to keep a-going; you've got to dream."

 "In the beginning I had money; I wasn't a poor little thing. 

I don't know what I would have done if I'd had to come to New York 

and get a job as a waiter or something like that.

I think I'm a success, but I had every advantage; I should have been ".

"I think every actress in the world looked up to her with a kind of reverence and a sense of, 'Oh boy, if only I could be like her. We never looked at her with envy or jealousy because she worked with such grace and wit and charm. You only wish that one day you could be like her"- Elizabeth Taylor

Hepburn and Taylor on the set of Suddenly Last Summer

  "I strike people as peculiar in some way, 
although I don't quite understand why. 

Of course, I have an angular face, an angular body and, 
I suppose, 
an angular personality, 
which jabs into people."

 1928 she married Ludlow Ogden Smith, a member of a wealthy Pennsylvania family. 

She immediately made him change his name to S. Ogden Ludlow
She was a divorcee, the Mexican sort, by 1934

 "I would have been terrified alone in New York City,

"We bought this house in '31, & then the minute I won the Academy Award, 

I got rid of Luddy."

"I always wanted to be a movie actress. I thought it was very romantic. 
And it was."

After box office flops KH headed to Broadway for PHILADELPHIA STORY, a bonafide hit, created especially for her for-she acquired the film rights & sold them to MGM, one of its biggest hits of 1940-with the help of her X Howard Hughes. She was in control of her own career.

 the one she loved the most

Hepburn, who was wearing heels when she met Tracy said, 

"I'm afraid I'm too tall for you, Mr. Tracy." 

Joseph Mankiewicz retorted, "Don't worry, he'll soon cut you down to size."

 

"If you always do what interests you at least one person will be pleased."

 "I wear my sort of clothes to save me the trouble of deciding which clothes to wear."

 "My greatest strength is common sense,

I am really a standard brand like Campbell's tomato soup or Baker's chocolate."

 "Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - 

only with what you are expecting to give - 
which is everything."

"If you survive long enough you're revered- rather like an old building." 

I think she was just ahead, 
way ahead, of her time.

next- Kate decorates!
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